Filed under art

Inkscape: awesome swirls tutorial

i stumble across this little gem of a tutorial today for doing swirls in inkscape. (curvy things, vines, whatever you wanna call them, they are all the rage at the moment)
i have been looking for a simple technique to do this sort of thing, and now i have found it!
in the past, i was creating my curves in the GIMP and then vectorising them in inkscape…
it is so much easier doing it MrTentacleguy’s way in inkscape…

creating_swirls_in_inkscape_by_mrtentacleguy.jpeg

Inkscape: sticker with folded edge tutorial

 I decided to to a tutorial for creating a simple sticker with a folded edge.
This is what we are aiming for:
51.png


Phase One:
1. Draw  a circle with the circle tool.
2. Using the path tool, draw a shape that intersects the circle for your ”dogear”
3. Select the path and the circle and use Path>Cut Path.
And set the colours of both the paths that result from this.
15.png


Phase Two:
1. Select the ”Dogear” (mine is black) and press flip vertical.
2. Then press flip horizontal.21.png


Phase Three:
1. Select the main body of the sticker (mine is blue)
RightClick > Duplicate, then change the colour. (mine is pink)
2. Do it again and change the colour to something different again. (mine is green)
3.  Select the green one, and use the arrow keys to offset it a bit.
4. Then select both the green and pink objects and choose Path>Difference
5. Change the colour of the remaining path to black.
6. Open the stroke/fill dialog and play with transparency & blur31.png


Phase Four:
1. Duplicate the black “Dogear” object, and change the colour.
2. Select the black one (underneath) and play with the blur and transparency.
3. Duplicate the body of the sticker again.
4. Press CTRL+A to select all, then choose Object>Clip>Set
5. Add your text, and you are done!

41.png

sticker with a folded edge in inkscape…

i made a sticker (in inkscape) with a folded down edge at the top-left.
make one and stick in on your blog. all the cool kids are…

drawing1.png

shattered / smashed text tutorial

as promised, i have done up the tutorial for my smashed / shattered text effect. it is quite a simple process…
please, post links to your creations using this tutorial in the comments :P

Firstly, type your string as text.

1.png

next, i manually kerned my letters to make the spacing closer
together and a bit randomly moved up or down.

(manual kerning is done by putting the cursor after a letter,
holding down ALT and pressing an arrow key.)

2.png

now, we are going to take a wedge out of the text…
draw the wedge that you want to take out with the path tool.

3.png

now, select both the wedge and the text, and duplicate these items…
(do not deselect them after duplication)

4.png

with one copy of the text and the wedge item selected, choose
path > intersection, (this will create the wedge item from the text)
and change its colour (i changed it to magenta)

6.png

now, select the other red wedge path and the other text path
and choose path> difference. this will create a path of the text, with-
out the wedge in it, like below:

8.png

repeat this process on the black text for a number of different wedges…
and you will end up with something like this…

9.png

next, move the wedges out a bit to create the ”shattered” look…
you may need to path>inset some of the wedges to make them fit and look right…

10.png

now, combine all these seperate paths together…
press CTRL+A to select all, then choose path>combine…

11.png

next i put a ”grunge” look to the text…
there are many different ways of creating ”grunge brushes” in inkscape.
examples of how to do this can be found at these two places:
http://howto.nicubunu.ro/grungy_brushes/
http://www.redhatmagazine.com/…

here is the SVG file of the grunge i used:
http://www.box.net/shared/i70qaio1v7  

to use it, just lay it where you want on your path (in this case it is our shattered text…)
select both the grunge and the texty path, and choose path>differnce…

12.png

and here is the finished version… (SVG is here)
13.png

shattered text in inkscape

i was bored again, so i decided to play with making a shattered text effect(broken glass, smashed effect) in inkscape.

here is the result that i came up with:

shattersmall.png

tell me what you think…

if i get a good response, i will do a tutorial for how to do something like this…

EDIT:  i have now done this tutorial… you can view it here

splatter brushes for inkscape

once again, nicu has inspired me to play with inkscape, and using ”brushes” for inscape.
i found some splatterbrushes for the GIMP at deviantart,
so i decided to vectorise them with inkscape and try to use them.

here is what i ended up with:

splatterexample.png

The original brushes (for the GIMP) can be found here: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/45042105/

Here is my SVGz file of these ”brushes” (each path is an individual brush) :http://www.box.net/shared/uiozdacf4b

For info on how to use ”brushes” in inkscape - have a look at nicu’s tutorial 

Pixel Art meets the Rubik’s Cube

Here is some pretty cool pixel art with that was created by a dude with some rubik’s cubes. -follow this link to view all of his creations.

read more | digg story